


basura

by whatsupbitches (Larkin)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12376821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larkin/pseuds/whatsupbitches
Summary: A series of vignettes about Dennis Reynolds, from ages 5 through 14, and his relationships with the women in his life.





	basura

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haemophilus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemophilus/gifts).



Josefina has a rule: no crying. She lays it out on her first day alone with the twins. Dennis and Dee watch cartoons in the rec room while Josefina keeps an eye on them; then the phone rings, Josefina leaves the room, and Dennis and Dee begin to fight over the remote control.

Dennis says, “Give it!”

Dee says, “No.”

Dennis says, “GIVE IT!”

Dee says, “NO,” and holds it high above Dennis’s head. Dennis jumps and she snatches it away. Dennis begins to wail. He yanks Dee’s hair, and then she’s wailing too.

Josefina bustles back into the rec room, pulls the children away from each other. “No crying!” she shouts, one fist clenched in each twin’s shirt collar, her face red. Angry, they think. “No crying. That’s the rule with me. _Queda c_ _laro?_ ”

The twins are startled into silence. Josefina, who seemed so nice at first, who let them drink Coke and watch cartoons, has turned out to be scary. Later, after they’ve been put to bed, the twins will take turns punching and stomping on a pillow, pretending it’s Josefina’s face. But for now it’s safest to do what she says.

Dennis worries about the “no crying” rule. He knows he’s a crybaby, even more so than his sister. He knows boys shouldn’t cry as much as he does, but sometimes—like when he sees a commercial on TV for a cool toy car that he can’t have right this second—everything is so sad, he can’t understand why _everyone_ isn’t crying.

One day, when the cartoons are over, Dennis and Dee are chasing each other around the house. They’re laughing; Dee is fast, Dennis can never outrun her, but it’s fun when she catches him and they tumble together onto the squishy carpeted floor. It’s his turn to chase her now. She turns a corner, bright pigtails bobbing behind her. Dennis runs after her and crashes headfirst into the wall.

His forehead hurts. He touches it and his hand comes away wet and red and his first thought is _no crying no crying no crying_. Dee sees the blood and screams. Josefina comes running and gasps. _No crying no crying no crying_ and he’s crying. Dennis winces as Josefina swoops down upon him—to punish him?

“ _Pobrecito_ ,” says Josefina, hugging him tightly. She carries him to the bathroom and doesn’t get mad. In fact, her face is tight with worry as she cleans and bandages his forehead. “Un besito,” she says and kisses over the Band-Aid. “All better, right?”

Dennis nods.

“When Señora Barbara comes home,” says Josefina, “I tell her what a good boy you are, okay? And you tell her I made you all better.”

At first Dennis is pleased: Josefina thinks he’s a good boy. Then he sees Dee’s skeptical face in the bathroom mirror—Dee is lurking in the bathroom doorway, watching—and as they lock mirror-eyes, Dennis remembers that he wasn’t a good boy today. Why would Josefina lie?

“ _Hijo de puta_ ,” Josefina whispers to the ceiling. “I need this job so bad.”

And Dennis realizes that Josefina isn’t scary at all. Josefina is _scared_.

Scared of Frank and Barbara: that makes sense. But also scared, for some reason, of the twins. How funny to have a grown-up lady be scared of you!

“Maybe,” says Dennis. “Or maybe I’ll tell Mommy you hit me.”

He’s sitting in Josefina’s lap, and he can feel her twitch as if he’s pricked her with a pin. In the mirror, Dennis and Dee smile at each other.

*

Eventually the twins and Josefina reach an understanding: they won’t bother her if she doesn’t bother them. She lets them scream, cry, pull each other’s hair, play in the parked Mercedes and honk the horn for hours; in return, they let her disappear all day long to watch her Spanish TV shows or take a nap in their parents’ bed. At mealtimes, instead of waking her up, they picnic on cookies and Coke in their bedroom, stuffing their mouths with Oreos until their teeth turn black. When Frank and Barbara come home late at night, Josefina tells them that the twins were good today; the twins, vibrating in bed with sugar and caffeine, pretend to be asleep.

“I like Josefina,” says Dennis one night in the bath.

“You want to marry her,” says Dee from the other end of the tub.

“Shut up,” says Dennis, splashing her.

Giggling, Dee leans down and pretends to kiss the metal knob that controls the Jacuzzi jets. “ _Oh, Josefina_ ,” she says, doing a dumb voice.

“I don’t sound like that.”

“ _Josefina, I love y_ —” She mooshes her lips against the knob and a jet of hot water roars out into the tub, bubbling the water and making the twins scream with delight. They run the Jacuzzi jets until the bathtub overflows onto the bathroom floor, because it’s fun to make a flood.

In the morning, when Frank starts shouting and cursing about the leak in the kitchen ceiling, the twins pretend not know anything about it.

*

Barbara is home more often than Frank, but Barbara is rarely really _there_. She sleeps a lot, even more than Josefina. Even when she’s awake, she moves through the house like she’s sleepwalking. Sometimes Dennis or Dee crashes right into her and she doesn’t seem to notice.

But other times Barbara gets mad, and this is scarier than when Frank gets mad. It’s easy to guess what will make Frank mad—leaky ceilings, late dinners, scratches on the Mercedes, screaming twins, Barbara asking for money, that Geraldine Ferraro lady on TV. It’s impossible to guess what will make Barbara mad.

One morning Barbara is drinking coffee in the kitchen when Dee and Dennis come running in. Dennis yells, “I call the last Oreo!”

“Too late,” said Dee. “I already ate it.”

“You did not! Where’s the box?”

“I threw it in the basura,” says Dee.

Barbara whirls around so fast her coffee splashes onto her peach silk bathrobe. “What did you just say, Deandra?”

Dee freezes. She doesn’t know what she just said, and neither does Dennis.

“You threw it in the _what?_ ” says Barbara.

Is _basura_ a swear word? Uncertain, Dee doesn’t repeat it, and neither does Dennis.

“ _Jjjjosefina_ taught you that, didn’t you?” says Barbara, sarcastically over-pronouncing the H sound like she’s hawking a loogie. “Is she teaching you Spanish so all of you can shit-talk me behind my back? Is that what I’m paying for?”

Dennis is embarrassed; he didn’t even know _basura_ was Spanish.

Now for some reason Barbara is looking right at him. “Dennis, you tell me. Is that what I’m paying for?”

Hearing her name, Josefina walks into the kitchen. “ _Que pasa?_ ” she asks, glancing at Barbara uncertainly.

Confused, scared, Dennis runs to Josefina and grabs Josefina’s sleeve and looks right into Josefina’s pretty dark eyes and what comes out of his mouth is: “Mommy, do we have more Oreos?”

He realizes his mistake the instant that Dee shrieks with laughter. He wonders if he can play it off, turn to Barbara and pretend he was addressing her. He turns to Barbara just in time to see Barbara throw her coffee cup onto the kitchen floor.

Smash. Coffee flood. _No crying._

That’s the last time they ever see Josefina.

*

None of the post-Josefina maids last long. The twins are twelve when the maids stop being tasked with looking after them. The twins are twelve when they get separate bedrooms.

Dennis is twelve the night Barbara first slips into his bedroom. It’s late—two? Three? His bed creaks as she plops down hard beside him. Her soft hands fumble across the pillow for his hair, his face; her nails are sharp. She smells like wine and perfume.

“Dennis,” she’s mumbling. “Baby boy, are you awake?”

He is. What’s going on?

“I just want to snuggle you,” she says, curling up around him over the blankets. “I just need a snuggle from my special boy right now.”

He can’t remember the last time Barbara wanted to snuggle him. He wishes Dee were here to see this; she’s never going to believe it. He also wishes Dee were here to absorb some of the snuggling, because the combined heat of Barbara and the blankets is suffocating.

“Your father is a bastard,” Barbara is saying. “An absolute bastard. Do you know that, Dennis? Do you know about all the other women?”

Dennis understands that this is an important moment: he’s being invited into something adults-only. Why him and not Dee?

“I’m telling you this,” says Barbara, as if reading his mind, “because you’re my special boy. You’ve always understood me better than Deandra. You understand people better than Deandra. You’re not like other kids, you know.”

Then Barbara goes quiet. The room is dark and hot, so hot that Dennis’s body flashes cold before going warm again, so hot that he feels like his body isn’t even his.

He shifts toward Barbara and in a voice that sounds new in his ears—an adult voice, he thinks—he says, “Tell me about all the other women.”

*

These late-night mother-son snuggle-talks become a regular occurrence. Not nightly, but frequent enough that Dennis always lies awake braced for them. He doesn’t like being taken by surprise.

He learns so much: about strip clubs, about whores, about what really happened to Josefina. At first he plans to share all his new knowledge with Dee. But there’s so much to keep track of—and anyway, it feels nice to know something she doesn’t. Now, when Dee outruns him or beats him at wrestling, he doesn’t get mad anymore; he just smiles mysteriously like he has a secret. Which he does. Lots of them.

One morning before school, Dennis and Dee are eating Lucky Charms in the kitchen when Barbara walks in—dressed for the day, unusual at this hour. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying, but when she looks at Dennis, she smiles a big smile.

“I’ve got a craving for a new evening gown,” says Barbara. “Will you take me shopping today?”

Dennis glances at Dee and says, “It’s a school day.”

“Let’s play hooky,” says Barbara. “I’ll tell the teacher you’re sick. Here, Deandra, you can give her the note.”

Dee looks stricken as Barbara scribbles on a yellow legal pad.

“Can I come shopping too?” asks Dee.

“Well, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?” says Barbara, laughing. “Who would give the teacher the note?”

Dee’s face scrunches up, turns bright red. Ugly, Dennis thinks.

“That’s not FAIR!” screeches Dee, and Dennis thinks that this is why Barbara doesn’t visit Dee at night, doesn’t tell her secrets, doesn’t invite her shopping—because Dee doesn’t know how to act adult.

“Deandra, please,” says Barbara, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Don’t caterwaul. Dennis, I’m thinking Barney’s. Or, no, let’s make a real day of it—drive up to White Plains, go to Neiman Marcus!”

Barbara lets Dennis sit in the front seat of the Mercedes. She even lets him pick the music. Dennis feels like everyone in the world is stuck at school except him and Barbara, and he wishes the two of them could stay in the car forever.

Neiman Marcus is boring, but in a clean, soothing way. Dennis wanders from rack to rack, touching all the different fabrics—soft suede, prickly sequins, slippery silk. On one floor of the store there’s a glowing tank full of tropical fish, and he loses track of time staring at it until he hears Barbara yelling.

“You BITCH,” Barbara is saying. “What do you MEAN you ONLY have sample size? I AM sample size! I used to be a fucking MODEL—I can fit your fucking sample size, you FAT BITCH!”

A flock of saleswomen materialize from the racks and surround Barbara, cooing soft dovelike murmurs until Barbara is happy again.

It’s past dinnertime when Barbara and Dennis get back home. He finds Dee eating Oreos in the rec room; she looks so small, he thinks, all alone in front of the big-screen TV. For a moment he wishes he’d spent today with her instead. For a moment he wants to give her a hug.

Then she looks up at him and scowls and says with Oreo-black teeth, “I hate you.”

Dennis says, “You’re a bitch.”

*

The twins are fourteen when Dee gets the back brace. The doctor says a parent needs to be there for the fitting—not a maid, a real parent or legal guardian, for legal reasons—and Frank is out of town as usual, so the task falls to Barbara. Barbara picks up the twins at school and drives them to the pediatrician and waits with Dennis in the waiting room. Barbara and Dennis flip through magazines and gnash their teeth with irritation until Dee reappears.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” says Barbara.

Dennis looks up. He hardly recognizes his sister in the metal cage.

Dee is in tears. “It hurts,” she says. “I hate it.”

Barbara laughs, so Dennis laughs too. “You look like a robot,” says Dennis, and Barbara laughs harder.

After signing the paperwork, Barbara drives the twins home and orders Chinese for dinner. The three of them eat it right out of the takeout containers at the kitchen table. Dee’s brace creaks every time she shifts in her chair or reaches for another eggroll.

“My _God_ , Deandra,” says Barbara. “Would it kill you keep it down?”

“It’s not me,” says Dee. “It’s the brace.”

“I don’t care what it is. That sound sets my goddamn teeth on edge. Just stop. All right?”

“Fine by me,” says Dee. “Let’s go back to the doctor and take this thing off.”

Barbara throws her wineglass at Dee. It misses Dee’s head narrowly and shatters against the sink.

“You’ve got a mouth on you today,” says Barbara. “One more smart remark out of you and I’ll slap you in the teeth.” She gets up and storms out of the kitchen, leaving glass shards all over the floor.

Dee is speechless. Even Dennis is shocked. Dee was being mouthy, but no more so than usual; both twins have said much ruder things in front of Barbara and gotten away with it. The rules seem to have changed on them, and the twins, for the first time in years, are united in fear.

Dee is crying again. “She’s such a bitch,” says Dee. “She’s a bitch and I fucking hate her.”

Dennis says nothing.

“Why does she hate me?” says Dee. “Why does she like you better? What’s so special about you, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” says Dennis. Then, without quite knowing he’s going to say it, he adds, “But you didn’t deserve that just now.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Dennis wonders if Barbara will come into his room tonight, if she’ll snuggle with him and make him reassure her that she was right to throw the glass at Dee, that Dee is a bad daughter and Barbara is doing the best she can. He feels sick. He hates eggrolls.

He says to Dee, “Want to spend the night together? Like when we were little? I can bring my sleeping bag into your room.”

Dee narrows her eyes at him. “Is this a trick?”

She looks ugly with her eyes narrowed like that. She looks ugly in the brace. That’s not her fault, unless—maybe—the world is divided into people who deserve good things (him) and people who deserve bad things (Dee). In which case it _is_ her fault, and she _does_ deserve this. She deserves all of it.

“Yes,” says Dennis. “Congratulations. You figured it out. No one fucking likes you.”

*

He doesn’t get much sleep these days. He’s gotten in the habit of taking naps in the school library, the back corner behind the shelf where all the old _National Geographic_ s are stacked. It’s quiet and no one ever goes back there. Usually the school bell wakes him up in time to avoid getting caught, but one afternoon he sleeps through it.

“Young man.”

He opens his eyes to see Ms. Klinsky looming over him. Shit.

“The school is closing. I have to lock up.”

How long has he been sleeping? “What time is it?”

“Almost six o’clock.”

He’s missed the bus, then. “Fuck,” he says without thinking. “Sorry,” he adds.

Ms. Klinsky chuckles. “Don’t worry. I’ve heard worse.” She kneels down beside him. “Are you all right?”

“I must have dozed off,” he says. “I was studying pretty hard.”

“Oh, please. I know you come in here to nap every day.”

Is he in trouble? She’s still smiling at him. She’s sitting very close to him. She smells like perfume.

“I get it,” she says. “This is a great place to sleep. I do it too, sometimes, when no one’s around.”

“Yeah?” says Dennis. “Maybe we should do it together sometime.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but he’s pleased when Ms. Klinsky laughs.

“Interesting proposition,” she says. She stands, smoothes out her skirt. “But right now I have to lock up.”

Dennis jumps up. “Let me help you,” he says. He wonders if his reluctance to go home is too obvious. “I mean, if you want company. I bet it’s a lonely job, being a librarian.”

“Sometimes,” says Ms. Klinsky. “But it has its moments.”

“Tell me,” says Dennis. He’s switched—he’s not sure exactly when—to his nighttime voice, his adult voice. “Tell me everything.”

Ms. Klinsky looks at him for a moment. She says, “You’re not like other kids, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” says Dennis. “Believe me, I know.”


End file.
